Administering medicine, vitamins, or other pills to infants can be difficult at best. As a consequence, many medicines such as aspirin, antibiotics, and other drugs are made and sold in liquid form for easy administration to small children and infants. For those instances where the medicine is not available in liquid form, and perhaps only in tablet form, a pill must be separately crushed with, for example, a mortar and pestle, and the powder or pill crushings transferred to another container or dispensing utensil where it can be mixed with fluid for oral administering of the drug to the patient. There are several drawbacks with this technique, as pointed out in the parent hereof, such as the risk of low and unpredictable compliance and cross contamination. As disclosed and claimed in the parent, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, this same problem exists for many infirm adult patients and the solution thereto was provided by the pill crushing syringe disclosed and claimed in the parent. However, there are many occasions when it is not desired to administer the medicine through a syringe and instead it is desired to be orally administered.
In order to solve these and other problems in the prior art, and as an extension of the general concept disclosed and claimed in the parent, the inventor herein has succeeded in designing and developing a hand held pill crushing and dispensing device for the oral administering of medicine to infants and others to whom for whatever reason it is desirable to orally administer medicine but are unable to swallow a pill. In its simplest form, the present invention includes a container in the form of a barrel with an abraded surface on its bottom interior surface with a removable plunger having a matching abraded surface for insertion therein to crush a pill. A dispensing utensil, such as a spoon or the like, extends from the lip of the barrel, and may be integrally formed therein during manufacturing, so that the pill crushings may be mixed with a fluid and poured into the spoon for oral administration all in the same hand held device.
As the barrel has a closed end, unlike the pill crushing syringe disclosed in the parent hereof, one of several constructions may be used to facilitate the advancing of the plunger into the barrel closed end which is otherwise resisted by the pocket of air trapped between the plunger and barrel. One such solution is to provide a sufficient tolerance between the plunger and barrel sidewall so that the pocket of air may escape through the space therebetween as the plunger is advanced. Still another solution is to provide an air passageway through the length of the plunger which may be sealed at its outer end to allow for the fluid/pill crushing mixture to be shaken and yet prevent any escape thereof through the passageway. Alternately, a cork or other closure may be directly inserted into the barrel to close it off after fluid has been added to agitate the fluid/pill crushings into a suspension for administration.
Still other variations of construction include a threaded fitting between the plunger and barrel which provide for a positive advancement of the plunger within the barrel by a twisting of the plunger with respect to the barrel to thereby allow for greater force to be applied in crushing a pill. In still another alternative construction, the lunger may itself be hollow and a cap be provided to enclose the plunger and provide a ready container for storage of additional tablets of medicine for later administration.
As explained above, one of the useful features of the present invention is the integral formation of a spoon to the lip of the barrel into which the suspension may be poured by merely tilting the barrel into a generally horizontal orientation. This eliminates any transfer of pill crushings from one container to another which could result in low or unpredictable compliance and the risk of cross contamination as is prevalent with prior art devices. Furthermore, a parent may confidently bring the pill crushing device close to the mouth of a flailing infant in a vertical orientation and avoid the significant risk of spilling the medicine which is inherent with a typical spoon type administration technique. Upon readying the infant for administration of the medicine, the pill crushing device may then be quickly reoriented from vertical to horizontal and, if desired, in one quick motion inserted into the infant's mouth to orally administer the medication.
The elegantly simple design of the present invention facilitates its manufacture through high speed low cost plastic manufacturing processes to permit their economical production and sale at low cost for single use application. Alternately, other constructions could be utilized to provide multiple use devices which are suitable for repeated cleaning or sterilization, as appropriate. Thus, with the present invention, a hand held device to crush a pill and orally administer its crushings as a suspension in a fluid may be widely used in an economical and cost effective manner to satisfy a long felt need.
While the principal advantages and features of the present invention have been briefly described above, a more thorough understanding and appreciation for the invention's advantages and features may be attained by referring to the drawings and description of the preferred embodiment which follow.